Like a Disease
by EmilyEphebiphobia
Summary: Ariadne considered going to a therapist to try to figure out what that impossible and unreal man, Arthur was doing to her mind. Ariadne/Arthur. High T for slight cursing and slightly suggestive.


**Okay I really am loosing it. I was seriously listening to a song and BOOM! shit like this occurs. I couldn't stop typing til I wrote the last word. Holy crap. Well ... enjoy? Heh. **

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><p><strong>Like a Disease<strong>

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><p>Everything about him pissed her off.<p>

Its such an immature thing to think, but it felt so right.

She hates how he's always in a suit, how he acts so robotic, how serious he always looks, how clean and tidy he is. She hates it all.

And yet she loves it, without a reason.

When she first met him, she swore he wasn't real. She was dreaming, she had told herself, no one asked her to work an impossible job, no one asked her to meet such an impossible man as the one standing before her.

And yet it was real, she _was_ standing before him.

She had the stupidest idea to pinch herself, and tell herself it wasn't reality. Maybe she had had too many drinks last night and her sobconsious was getting her back.

When she first met him, she couldn't believe reality anymore. The status quo shifted entirely. She had never believed in love, it was the stupidest of things. She had stared at him, her brown eyes running from the top of his slicked-back, soft-looking dark brown hair, to his deep amber eyes, from the serious face, to the crisp of his suit and down to the shine of his dress shoes.

She had laughed. This really wasn't real. But Cobb had begged to differ. Both men looked at her, Cobb with his eyebrows raised and him, _Arthur_, with his bloody serious face still cold, but she could see that tiny hint of amusmant in his eyes. He had held out his hand for her to shake, but as he did, she had completely forgotten the basics of the social life.

The seconds she had hesitated seemed like endless minutes, before she shakily grasped his hand with her own. What she expected to feel was similarity to what he looked like, nothing but cold and serious. She didn't expect to suddenly be filled with an electricity like no other. It shot up from his hand like a spreading fire, coursing through her body, making her feel like she was floating.

How fucking _ridiculous, _her mind had thought soon after.

But she couldn't shake off how she felt. Everytime she thought of it, her mind would flash him standing in front of her, hands casually hidden in his pockets, his stance oddly straight and agile. He had only said three words to her, but those words had sent her over the edge.

_"It's a pleasure." _

She had damned him entirely, because every night after that had sent her into a dreaming frenzy of satin sheets, the smell of cinnamon, and his velvet voice breathing those three words into the juncture of her neck over and over again as they lay tangled in what she theorized after as his room (or what she had imagined it to be).

She had often woken up tangled in her own pastel colored sheets, sweating and blushing. Everytime she would check the clock (it was always 2 am when she woke) and take a freezing cold shower, trying to get him, and his annoying antics out of her mind. But he would crawl back like a disease, ad plague her.

The first time she had gone under the needle, it wasn't what she had expected. It was more of the feel not sight to the dream, and it called to her in ways she hadn't known possible. Dreaming was... she had never been able to put a word to it. It was too exquisite.

When the mysterious woman Cobb had called Mal stabbed her, she could feel the tendons in her abdomen ripping as the knife sliced through her. It was horrid, and at that moment, she had forgotten about the tidy man, with his suits, and his handsome face. It felt as if someone had pulled out everthing from her. Then she woke, her boot awkwardly falling through the strap of the lawn chair she had been laying on. And that's when everything about him came rushing back to her like a shock of electricty, much like when they shook hands.

_"Hey... look at me... your okay... your okay..."_

She couldn't think straight as his long, nimble fingers enclosed around her arm, and the other hand slightly carressed her shoulder.

In the back of her mind, she knew this would do something to her later on in her dreams. She wondered where her mind got its talent for turing everything he said or did into a passionate dream of some sort.

She had cursed Cobb, yelling at him, and turned to Arthur and implied with all her might that she wasn't doing this job. Her heart had ached slightly at the thought of not returning, not seeing this unreal man again. She had made sure that as she snatched up her coat and walked past him that her signature red coat had brushed his shoulder, in a way she hoped that he would remember it.

She had gone home that day and fallen asleep right away.

She was right about her mind because as soon as she was asleep, there she was layed on his satin sheets, on her stomach, her hair pooling over her back. Her eyes were wet in the dream, she figured she was crying. She had reached out with her tiny fingers and grasped a part of his sheets (_they were the color of his eyes_) and pulled it over her bottom half, as if to hide herself from him.

Suddenly he had been there, leaning over her, his long, nimble fingers scampering up her spine, brushing her hair away, and his lips (_god, she hoped they were like that in real life_) had trailed hot kisses across her shoulder blades and planted themself on her neck, and he had murmured the latest words for her mind to remember, telling her she was okay.

The day after she had realized what he was doing to her, and immediately fled back to that warehouse, to him, _Arthur_, that unreal bastard who plagued her like a virus. Out the corner of her eye she had seen him, knelt down in front of that damned contraction, the PASIV, with one arm bent over it, tinkering. She took in his sweater and the arch of his thin back, and more than else, she watched his neck, as it arched and strained as he became disolved in thoughts. She had cleared her throat watching him jump slightly, and turn his head, staring at her.

He had stood there, a small smirk on the coner of his lips, his hands calmly planted in his pockets. He had admitted Cobb had said that she would be back and they had shared a moment about how .. exquisite dreams were. There really was nothing like it. Thats when her mind started going into overdrive.

The more they interacted, talked, sometimes flirted, and more importantly the more she studied him, the more she would dissolve all sense of reality in her dreams, and in the real world. Even when she was influenced by an idea on her architectual sketches and designs she would have to mentally stop few times to pull herself away from staring at him, or thinking of him.

She was tempted to go to a therapist.

Someone who could help her solve what he was doing to her. She would never admit it to everyone but she had gone to her sister, Lily and confessed everything except the illegal job she was working on. The first thing her sister had pondered over the phone was

_"Is it love at first sight?" _

That horrid word being mentioned again had made her truly curious. Was it? She didn't think so. But according to Lily, it was very possible and probable that she, Ariadne, a woman never believing in love, was in deed deeply in _love _with Arthur, the damned impossible man.

Confessing to Lily had somewhat eased her mind, and it calmed for a while. Working on the Fischer job with him became easier, and she was able to stay on track, even when she watched him lean back dangerously far in his chair during a meeting, and that brittish forger, Eames had showed her what a kick was by causing Arthur to fall forward.

As they began working closer, and she indeed caught him flirting more often, her mind began to pick up the pace more. It seemed more frequently that her mind would replay the moment when they were working on the second level, the fancy hotel.

She was describing the scene to him, using her hands as emphasis, her eyes trying not to wander to his perfect wine colored dress shirt, her mind trying not to curiously wander if his body was anything like she had dreamed many times before. He had been nodding, a sign that he was listening, his hands buried in his pockets.

Then it came time for her to show him a cut through the maze, which requied what she considered a heart racing moment. She was to indicate to him the hidden path, which is when he had bent slightly over the three dimensional model, his eyes curiously searching for the path. That was when she stopped breathing as his hot breath had been inches from her face, his arm brushing the top of her arm (_he was muscularly slim and tall, utterly perfect_), and his tie had fallen in front of him, brushing her wrist.

She knew there was something seriously _intruiging _about him.

Time seemed to skip from then to the team standing on the stairs of the lobby, figuring out how to get Fischer alone. Once it was resolved, thanks to Saito and his millionaire influence, Cobb had taken the time to comment her on her great work. She had smiled, because he was her boss, her friend and more he was like her father, that she never really had. She had thought that that would make her day, but as soon as she smiled, her eye caught someone else smiling, someone not Cobb.

He, _Arthur_, the impossible and unreal man was smiling at her, his facial emotions saying the words his voice wouldn't.

Time again had skipped, and it seemed like she remembered Cobb and his reality and nonreality problem with Mal, but it didn't seem to set in as much as Arthur did to her mind. She had sat in that plane seat, criss crossing her legs, her mind finally buried in something not smelling like cinnamon with crisp suits and a collected aura. She was carelessly doodling a sketch of an apartment she had seen on the tv the night before, and had instantly taken to its beautifulness.

But she knew her mind, and few minutes after she had been intruiged with the apartment, he had walked in the cabin of the plane, in a new crisp suit, his hair as always slicked back, and taken a seat behind her. That had jolted her mind, and immediately she smelt the cinnamon, her senses suddenly wanting so hard to be on those satin sheets again, tangled around him like vines.

They shared a small greeting, and small smiles, before once again her mind blurred and time skipped to the second level, the fancy hotel.

She wasn't going to admit it to anyone, but she could have sworn to God that when she was sat on the bench with him, her own projection of Arthur had saunted past them, a smirk on his lips. She went over the possibilities of it being accurate and being real, but there were none. She hoped he hadn;t noticed.

She had gotten herself caught up with what was happening, the gravity shifts, and the staring projections, and had actually forgotten that the impossible man was sat inches from her. She realized that she was slightly scared, not used to the shifting environment or the cold glares of the passing people. She had questioned Arthur, hoping he knew what was happening which is when he had told her what the projections were doing.

What he said next had actually flung her off the mental cliff she had been hanging on to since she met him.

_"Quick, give me a kiss." _

Those five words had sent fire across her cheeks and down her body, settling itself in her stomach, like a burning pit. Her mind had shut down as she turned to him without knowing it, and suddenly his lips were on hers, moving with hers, _becoming one with hers_, in a small, but chaste kiss.

She had considered deepening it, but as soon as it happened, he pulled back, that damned smirk on his face, as his deep amber eyes stared into her brown ones.

She became grounded, and her mind returned, but all she could blurt out was that the projections were still looking. This had made her dig a deeper hole for herself to fall into as his smirk widened, and his mischevious smile crawled up his usually unemotionless face to his amber eyes, (_the color of his satin sheets_) and he had only been able to say

_"Yeah, it was worth a shot."_

She knew then that she loved him. Love, the stupid and meaningless word to her usually was filled with burning passion as her mind registered the facts.

Ariadne loved Arthur.

She couldn't help but smile when he stood up and said they should get out of here.

Again her mind started to play the fast forward button, as they completed the job, and she couldn't seem to remember what she did or even said to save Fischer, or Cobb. The next thing she knew, she was at the LA airport, standing around the luggage carousel waiting for her small suitcase to arrive.

A figure had creeped up behind her as she watched Cobb dissapear into the crowd, and Eames promising to get the team together later, and leaned his head onto her shoulder, his hot breath against her neck.

She knew the smell of cinnamon.

_"How about dinner?" _

She had turned to Arthur, and smiled, nodding almost frantically, she realized later. They had dressed up, and gone to a fancy resturant, and he had revealed that he had booked her in the hotel he was staying, as a regualar, the suite adjacent to the one he always stayed in.

That night, Ariadne was layed on satin sheets, inhaling the scent of cinnamon coming off the being next to her, their bodies tangled together. She waited until Arthur was asleep, his head rested in her neck, to pull out her totem, the chess piece, from her jacket which had been carelessly thrown on the nightstand after their earlier encounter. She had placed it on the nightstand and gave it a nudge, watching the small object immediately topple.

She sweared to god that impossible and unreal man, who wore suits, who was collected and tidy, her Arthur, had _chuckled_.

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><p><strong>END. <strong>

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><p><strong>Omfg. I just... no comment. Review? My craziness shocked EVEN me. I can't believe I just wrote that in one hour without stopping. Thanks for reading. <strong>


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